The Borough Council of Greenville, Pennsylvania has been reciting prayers at their meetings for decades. So when a local resident finally told the Freedom From Religion Foundation about it, you know exactly how council members reacted when they got the complaint letter:

A lot of Christian leaders have an opportunity to do the right thing on marriage equality before they get steamrolled by history.

So what’s stopping them? Just their Biblical convictions? That’s true for many… but not all of them, as Sally Quinn notes:

I have had a few religious leaders confide in me that they were not personally against gay marriage but could not take that position publicly for fear of losing their congregations. Think of the conflict and, yes, shame they must be feeling now and how it will only worsen with time. One day, they will have to come around or they really will lose their congregations. They have one thing going for them. Most religions believe in redemption. They’ll need to pray for it big-time.

As we’ve learned from so many of the graduates of the Clergy Project, when you carry a secret that would shock your congregation, saying it out loud can be devastating, but the freedom you get from having a clear conscience is sooooo worth it.

I’ve spent a lot of time on this site talking about Rapid City, South Dakota, where the City Council begins meetings with an invocation delivered by a “local minister.“ FFRF has sent them warnings about it, but they haven’t stopped.

Most recently, they told a college-aged church/state activist that he was “too young to have wisdom.”